Many of us remember Ashton Kutcher because of his role on television shows or in the films but the fact is, he is also a businessman and an activist. He recently spoke to the people on The Today Show about a new Netflix original series, “The Ranch.”
When he was giving his interview, he talked about his organization that was helping to put an end to sex trafficking and child pornography. The name of the organization is Thorn, and he started it with Demi Moore when he was married to her back in 2008. In working with Thorn, Kutcher has learned that the majority of sex trafficking victims are being targeted online.
“We’re building digital tools to fight human trafficking. Basically, the purchase and commerce for human trafficking is happening online, just like everything else now, and so we’re building digital tools to fight back against it.”
The mission of his organization is to drive tech innovation to fight against trafficking. It is explained on his website:
“We partner across the tech industry, government and NGOs and leverage technology to combat predatory behavior, rescue victims, and protect vulnerable children. The site also lists 20 members of what it calls The Thorn Technology Task Force, comprised of technology companies that lend their knowledge, time and resources to the work that we do. Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Adobe are listed among the names who are helping Thorn’s cause.”
Thorn has been successful, although it has been running in the background. When you take a look at the numbers, however, they are quite impressive.
“We’ve built a tool to help law enforcement prioritize their caseload and recover victims and find traffickers. And we’ve found and identified and recovered over 6,000 trafficking victims this year. And we’ve found, identified, and recovered 2,000 traffickers.”
There also working toward an ambitious humanitarian goal.
“Our next battle, my next commitment…I’m going to make a pledge that I’m going to eliminate child pornography from the internet.”
Using Internet technology to find both victims and their captors is important, because the largest threat is online. According to data that was compiled by the organization, even sites like Craigslist are used in the sex industry.
As of 2015, 75% of child sex trafficking survivors said that they were sold online at one point. Asia, who is one of those survivors, had the following to say:
“People are posted and sold online multiple times a day. As far as the ad that was posted up [for me], there was a girl who eerily looked like me…just [like] you can go find a car, there was a picture, and a description, and a price.”
It is estimated that 4.5 million people are currently working for sex traffickers against their will worldwide.
You can learn more in this video:
Via: The Earth Child
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